New Delhi: The proposal to also serve breakfast to students under the midday meal scheme, rebranded as PM Poshan in 2021, is back on the Centre’s table, over two years after it was vetoed by the finance ministry, officials privy to the development told ThePrint.
The PM Poshan scheme provides free lunches on working days to children in government schools, government-aided anganwadis and madrasas. First started in 1995 as the midday meal scheme, the initiative aimed to ensure that children in government schools, especially those unable to get food at home, had at least one meal a day. The revamped scheme in 2021 put more focus on a child’s nutritional levels than just providing a meal.
The addition of breakfast in the midday meal programme is a component of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. However, the NEP being a prescriptive policy document, the recommendation is not binding on the government.
Sections within the establishment, particularly the ministry of education though, have consistently backed the proposal, which, if approved, will require an additional annual allocation of at least Rs 4,000 crore, said an official in the education ministry.
“Discussions have been held on the financial implications of implementing the scheme (with breakfast) in recent weeks,” the official added. However, no fresh proposal has yet been sent to the ministry of finance, they said.
Sources added that the PM Poshan division of the education ministry arrived at the estimate (Rs 4,000 crore) by calculating that the cooking cost for rolling out breakfast for students would be half the amount that goes into funding the hot cooked meals currently served at noon.
“Also, the foodgrains required would be one-third the amount needed to run the main scheme,” the official added.
ThePrint has reached the Ministry of Education on email for a comment. The report will be updated as and when a response is received.
Under the PM Poshan scheme, which officially covers 12.21 crore students in pre-primary classes and Classes 1 to 8 across states and Union Territories, the cost of foodgrains is borne entirely by the Centre.
Other components, including cooking cost, are split in a 60:40 ratio between the Centre and states and Union Territories with legislatures, and 90:10 ratio with the Northeastern states, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
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‘Provision of breakfast a welcome step’
In March 2020, a parliamentary panel had stated in its report that the education ministry had already drafted a proposal for the inclusion of breakfast in the scheme.
“The committee expresses its satisfaction to note that the department has drafted a proposal for the inclusion of breakfast in the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) Scheme. The committee is of the opinion that provision of breakfast is a welcome step as it would motivate the students to come to school in the morning,” the department-related parliamentary standing committee on education noted.
However, according to an August 2021 report of the House panel, the education ministry had taken up the proposal with the ministry of finance. But while it obtained the approval of the finance ministry to extend the scheme to pre-primary classes, the breakfast component was red-flagged.
“For inclusion of the component ‘provision of breakfast to pre-primary and elementary classes and provision for utensils (plate, spoon and tumbler)’, MoF [Ministry of Finance] has not agreed to the proposal. The matter will now be submitted to the Cabinet for continuation of MDM Scheme up to 2025-26 accordingly,” the report noted.
The renewed interest in the scheme has come at a time when many opposition-governed states have started serving breakfast to government school students. While the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led government in Tamil Nadu launched the breakfast initiative in August across all government primary schools, Telangana — then under the Bharat Rashtra Samithi and now under a Congress government — launched it in October.
“Even Kerala [under the Left Democratic Front] has been doing it in a decentralised manner. Andhra Pradesh [under the YSR Congress Party] has not started serving breakfast, but it has added a ragi malt drink to the PM Poshan menu. Karnataka [which currently has a Congress government], apart from eggs added under the previous BJP government, has also started providing milk to students as a pilot in some schools,” an education ministry official told ThePrint.
NEP 2020 observes that children are unable to learn optimally when they are undernourished or unwell. It cites research to underline that the morning hours after a nutritious breakfast can be “particularly productive” for the study of more demanding subjects and “hence these hours may be leveraged by providing a simple but energising breakfast in addition to midday meals”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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